


Elemental Bonds

by cruellae (tinkabelladk)



Category: Xenogears
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-04 12:59:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10991433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinkabelladk/pseuds/cruellae
Summary: Earth. Fire. Wind. Water. The four Elements during their time at Jugend, and the friendship they formed there.Four vignettes about the Elements, as they were, mostly centered around Citan.





	1. Wind

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if it's necessary to include a spoiler tag for a game this old, but just in case: Spoilers! 
> 
> Also, if I've gotten some points of lore wrong, please forgive this humble traveler. I played Xenogears years ago, and I'm on a second playthrough but haven't gotten to a lot of stuff yet, so my memory may be faulty.

“Come on,” Kahran Ramsus said, swinging his sword in a broad arc that cut the distance between himself and his classmate. “Say it one more time. Say it one more fucking time, I dare you.”

“Sheesh,” Deci said. He really should have stepped down at that point, but you didn’t get into Jugend by being a coward. “I didn’t realize you were going to take it like such a little bitch.”

Ramsus grit his teeth, fury flushing through him, as he heard words of rejection that echoed from a time before his self had even fully formed, from a time of deeply buried memory, when all there was was her voice, and her disdain. He swung the sword in a lethal arc, and it flashed through the air, then hit—not soft flesh and blood, but solid steel, ringing true on the impact. 

He looked up. Hyuga held his katana firmly against Kahran’s scimitar. Deci was slowly backing away. 

“Hyuga…” Kahran began, but Hyuga just raised an eyebrow at him, a familiar spark of mischief in his eyes, and then he twisted the blade just so and Kahran stumbled backwards. 

Kahran charged again, but it was playful, a dance in which the steps were always changing, and any stumble could land you on the ground with Hyuga’s laughing eyes on yours, and the sharp point of his sword at your throat. But not this time. This time Kahran had the advantage, a slight slip of Hyuga’s foot, and he pressed it. It always came down to this, his strength and passion against Hyuga’s cool intellect and quickness. 

In the end, he was able to twist their blades together, wrenching Hyuga’s katana from his hand and sending it skidding across the floor, where it stopped at Miang’s feet. She looked down at it disdainfully, then raised her head to look at Kahran with the same expression, and his heart gave a desperate, wretched lurch.

“You could have hit me, Kahran,” Miang said, softly but clearly, and Kahran was certain everyone around him could hear her. “You’re so careless.”

“I’ll do better,” Kahran said, with more force than the situation really warranted. He was sick with anger, that she would criticize him so, and sicker with shame, because he knew, deep down, that she was right. He was careless. He could have easily hurt the woman he was supposed to love. 

“The mistake was mine, Miang,” Hyuga said, coldly. “Though I would have assumed a woman of your caliber could easily avoid such a danger.”

“And I would have thought a man of your caliber could easily best someone like Kahran,” Miang said. 

Although Hyuga was sweaty and disheveled, strands coming free from his ponytail and falling around his face, he appeared as cool and collected as ever. But the good natured mischief was missing from his eyes as he held her gaze. 

She was the first to look away. “I don’t have time for this,” she said, and walked off without a word of goodbye. Kahran felt his heart go with her.


	2. Earth

“I hate this thing,” Jesse complained, tugging off his dress uniform, the starched, stiff monstrosity in green and white.

“I know,” Racquel said. She was struggling out of her own formal attire, but of course she would never complain. She had a quiet, self-possessed dignity that Jesse loved. In fact, he loved almost everything about her. “The Solaris Day Parade is just an exercise in pageantry.”

“Shush.” A worried line appeared between Jesse’s brows, and he kissed her. “You love this country as much as I do.” But when their eyes met, she appeared as troubled as he felt. Something was wrong in Solaris, and maybe it had been wrong for a long time.

They dressed in more comfortable clothes and found Sigurd and Billy in the living room. Sigurd had a toy submarine in his hand, sliding it along the sand colored carpet, while Billy held an action figure with a big gun and made “pew-pew” noises, trying to shoot it down.

Jesse smiled at the two of them. He liked to see them forget themselves and just play, like children should. Both Billy and Sigurd acted too old for their youthful age, but especially Sig, who at sixteen had the haunted eyes of a man who knows loss intimately. Jesse recognized in him the signs of brainwashing, but said nothing. What could he say, that would do any good?

“Jesse,” Sigurd said, setting aside the submarine and getting off the carpet. “Do you remember my friends Hyuga and Kahran?”

Jesse smiled indulgently. How could he not know Hyuga Ricdeau and Kahran Ramsus? They were both prodigies, even among the elite ranks of Jugend. And more importantly, they were Sigurd’s best friends, and he talked about them frequently.

“Sure,” he said. “I know them.”

Sigurd shifted his feet, looking down at the floor, silver hair falling in his face. Jesse knew that hesitant look. Sig wanted to ask for something, but experience had taught him that asking for things was dangerous. Jesse and Racquel had done their best to un-teach that lesson, but it hadn’t done much good.

“They don’t have families,” Sigurd said at last. “They’re just going to spend Solaris Day training in the barracks. Do you think that…” He trailed off, uncertainly.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” Jesse said. “Invite them over. We’ve got plenty to share.”

Sigurd grinned like the teenager he was, and dashed off to make the holo-call. Jesse went to find Racquel and see if they couldn’t scare up a few more chairs to put around the table.

~

 When Jesse opened the door, Hyuga and Kahran stood straight and did not smile.

“Thank you for having us, Sir,” Hyuga said, and they both tapped two fingers to their hearts in the Solarian salute. Not a surprising response. Jesse was older and in a class above them, so he was technically their superior officer.

He chuckled and let them in. “We’re not at Jugend,” he said. “So don’t you dare call me Sir. You can call me Jesse.”

“And call me Racquel,” his wife said, and her welcoming smile seemed to make the two relax a little more.

Hyuga smiled back. He was tall but slender, with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, and he wore curious gold-rimmed glasses with an extra lens sticking off to each side. Beside him, Kahran stood stiffly, his square jaw set and tense, his sandy hair perfectly tidy.

“Thank you, Racquel and Jesse,” Hyuga said, “for having us.”

“Hey!” Sigurd hurried down the stairs to meet them. “I’m glad you came.” His tone suggested he hadn’t been sure if they would. “I have a telescope upstairs that looks up at the surface. Do you guys want to look? You can see the desert of Aveh right now. It’s beautiful.”

The three of them went up the stairs together, Sig talking happily about Aveh and the sand, which he could spend hours looking at through his telescope. He seemed indifferent to the oceans and forests, but something about the desert seemed to call him.

~

 “Can I help?” Hyuga asked, standing in the doorway to the kitchen.

Jesse looked up from the roast bird he’d been basting. “Sure,” he said, handing Hyuga a bowl of roots and a masher. “Just turn those into mush. Simple enough.”

Hyuga nodded, and set about his task with a methodical precision better suited to building machines than mashing vegetables.

“You took Sigurd in off the streets,” Hyuga said, after a long silence. “You look out for him.”

“Sig’s a part of the family,” Jesse said, firmly, spreading flour evenly on the counter to knead the dough for dinner rolls.

“I thought so.” Hyuga set the bowl aside and stood next to Jesse. He reached out and pressed his finger to the flour, than began to draw in it a simple design. “Do you know what this is?” he asked, stepping back.

Jesse met his eyes. There was an uncanny intelligence there, a sharp, clever spark. “No,” he said.

"But you’ve seen it before,” Hyuga pressed.

Jesse said nothing.

“I understand why you wouldn’t trust a stranger,” Hyuga said. “I don’t pretend to be an honorable person. I don’t pretend to have strong allegiances. But Sigurd is my friend. And I’m worried about him. You know this is dangerous, even if you don’t know why.”

Jesse frowned at the symbol. Sure, he’d seen it before. Sigurd drew it, all the time, like he couldn’t help himself. When asked about it, he called it a meaningless doodle, something he drew in the margins of his notebook to pass the time in classes that were too easy for him.

“Sig says it’s just something he came up with,” Jesse said. “I don’t know what you’re on about.”

"It’s the royal crest of Aveh,” Hyuga said, and they were both silent for a moment, both thinking of Sigurd, upstairs with his telescope, fixated on the surface.

“He’s been—” Hyuga began, then stopped, as footsteps sounded on the stairs nearby. As Sigurd made his noisy, happy entrance into the kitchen, Kahran following silently behind, Hyuga gave them an easy smile that betrayed none of the unease he’d disclosed to Jesse. Jesse did his best too, to hide his worries. But as they ate, Racquel kept catching his eye across the table, concern written across her beautiful face. She knew something was wrong.

Something was wrong with Sig, and something was wrong with Solaris, and eventually, it would become impossible to ignore.


	3. Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *these vignettes are not in chronological order*

It was easy to get lost in machines, the design of them, the intricate interplay of gears and electricity that kept them running. Sigurd let his pencil drift over his notebook, sketching a design for an engine component that if he could just get it to work, just—

“What’s this, Harcourt?” The instructor leaned over his desk and delivered a sharp smack to the back of his hand with her pointer. His skin stung, but the humiliation stung worse—being hit like a schoolchild when he was trying to prove himself in the most elite military academy in Solaris.

“It’s nothing,” he said, looking up into her unsmiling face. “Sir,” he added, quickly.

She looked disgusted. “This is the third time this week, Harcourt. If you can’t pay attention in class, maybe you don’t belong at Jugend.”

“It’s hardly his fault this class is too easy,” said a boy sitting two rows away from Sigurd. He was slender—almost too slender to be a cadet, but he must be strong or they wouldn’t have let him in—and his long brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail. The overhead light glinted on his glasses as he turned in his chair to face Sigurd and the instructor. He wasn’t smiling, but there was laughter in his eyes.

“Did I ask you, Ricdeau?” the instructor growled.

“No, sir.” The boy managed to make the obsequious reply somehow defiant, and the effect wasn’t lost on the instructor.

“That’s it,” she said. “You two get out. Go down to the kitchens and tell them you’re there to peel the roots for dinner. All the roots. And then you’ll stand there and serve the rest of us—do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” Sigurd said. It might not sound like much of a punishment, but in Solaris, where status was everything, it was meant to be the height of humiliation. To serve their fellow students like a couple of second or third-class citizens—most students would rather take a beating.

#

"Sigurd, right? I’m Hyuga.” The boy gave Sig a friendly smile, like they weren’t standing in the middle of a room stacked hopelessly high with roots that needed to be peeled.

“Hi,” Sigurd said. He tried to copy Hyuga’s friendly smile, remembering what Racquel had told him before he started at Jugend. “Look people in the eye and smile,” she’d said. And he’d tried to move his mouth in the direction hers went, but it felt clumsy and false. When he complained to her that it wasn’t going to work, she promised it would get easier with time.

Still, Sigurd kept to himself, and had barely exchanged a handful of words with any classmate, which is probably why Hyuga felt the need to introduce himself, even though they were in most of the same classes.

“There are so many,” Sigurd said, looking at the pile of crates.

Hyuga shrugged. “We only have to peel about one crate, as long as we make it look like it took us all afternoon.”

“How do you know?” Sigurd peered at the other boy. “Do you get in trouble a lot?”

A mischievous smile tugged at the corner of Hyuga’s mouth. “No. But I have a friend who’s constantly in trouble.”

“Shut up, Hyuga,” said a boy standing in the doorway, but he said it fondly, and with an odd twist to his mouth, like he was trying to suppress a smile.

“Fuck you, Kahran,” Hyuga said, smiling back, making the words into a friendly greeting.

Sigurd could sense a powerful connection between the two, and some hidden part of him watched them laugh and clap each other on the back with a deep yearning. So this is what it was to have a friend. He wanted that. He hadn’t realized until right now how desperately he wanted that.

“Well, maybe I’ll just take these peelers and go back to the barracks,” Kahran said, holding out two strange utensils.

"Maybe I will just go to the machine shop and make more,” Hyuga said, but they were both clearly joking. Sigurd studied them, as though they were ambassadors from a foreign culture he wanted very much to join.

“Yeah, yeah,” Kahran said, handing one utensil to Hyuga and holding out the other to Sigurd, who took it after a moment’s hesitation. “I’d better get out before anyone comes by to see if you’re doing your job like good little worker bees.”

Hyuga stiffened, his hand clutching the peeler a little more tightly. It wasn’t a large reaction, but Kahran obviously noticed.

“Shit,” he muttered, kicking the floor. “I didn’t mean it like that."

“It’s fine,” Hyuga said, with an unconvincing smile. “Kahr, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“It matters,” Kahran said. “I’m such a fucking idiot. Hyuga…you know I don’t think of you like that.”

Hyuga put his hand on Kahran’s shoulder, long slender fingers against the white of Kahran’s uniform. “I know.”

Sigurd watched them with some confusion, but also a fierce envy he didn’t understand. Sigurd wanted Hyuga to put his hand on his shoulder in that gentle way, for Kahran to tease him. He wanted to belong among them, but he didn’t know how.

Kahran slipped out the back door to the kitchen and Hyuga turned to Sigurd. “I’m a third-class citizen,” he said, and it was odd the way he said it, without shame, with something like pride. “My parents were “worker bees.” Or slaves, if you want to be more accurate. That’s why Kahran was apologizing.”

“Oh,” Sigurd said, softly. He felt an odd ache in his heart, not for himself, but for Hyuga. “And what’s this?” he asked, holding up the strange utensil Kahran had given him. It was about the size and width of his thumb, with a sharp blade on the inside like a razor.

“I’ll show you.” Hyuga set a root on the table and put the little machine on top. He pressed a button and with a soft hum it whirred to life, traversing the root, shaving off the skin in wide swaths as it went. Hyuga turned the root as the machine worked, and in a matter of seconds it was neatly peeled.

"Kahran gets in a lot of trouble,” Hyuga said. “Mostly fighting with other students. I invented these so he wouldn’t have to spend so much time peeling roots.”

“I like it,” Sigurd said, grinning, shyness forgotten in his eagerness to dissect this new invention. “How did you make it?”

“Once we finish these, I’ll show you,” Hyuga said.

Sigurd nodded eagerly, his heart full of yearning and hope. This is what it must be like to have a friend.


	4. Water

“Congratulations, “Angel,” Kahran said, clasping Hyuga’s shoulder for a second. “It’s a rare honor.”

_And even rarer for a third class citizen from the hives,_ thought Hyuga. _How did I get from the slums where my family died to a place where I can stand before the Emperor and pledge my service as a Solarian Guardian Angel?_

“Great job,” Jesse said, reaching out to shake Hyuga’s hand. But there was unease in his eyes. “We’re proud of you.”

Raquel gave him a hug and a smile, and offered her congratulations too. Hyuga was still in the dress uniform he’d worn to meet with the Ministry, and the white fabric was stiff and unyielding as he leaned into her arms. He’d come straight to Jesse’s house after the meeting.

But of all of them, Kahran was the only one who really seemed pleased, opening a bottle of champagne and insisting they all make a toast to Hyuga’s long and legendary career. Sigurd hadn’t even come to the little impromptu party, and Hyuga couldn’t help but feel his absence. The four of them—the Elements—had been through so much together, Jugend and now past that, as they each advanced in their military careers. It didn’t feel quite right without Sig there.

He knew that Jesse and Sigurd were hiding something from himself and Kahran. He didn’t think Kahr had noticed, but he had seen the signs, shadowed glances traded when they thought he wasn’t looking, conversations that stopped when he entered a room, and now, Sigurd’s absence.

Hyuga did not like secrets unless they were his own. They teased at his mind like puzzles, and like puzzles, he could not forget them until their solutions were revealed.

After he left Jesse’s, he didn’t go home, but rather to Sigurd’s humble apartment, which was just a few blocks away from his own. He picked the lock with a little device of his own design, and let himself in.

Whatever Sigurd was plotting, he’d never leave evidence out in the open. It took Hyuga a good half hour to find the hiding spot, which was a small locked drawer strapped to the bottom of the easy chair in the corner. Hyuga opened it.

It took him a moment to make sense of the contents. Descriptions of the Gates and how they worked, shipping manifests for cargo sent to the surface, and a pass to enter the docks.

“So now you know,” said Sigurd, standing solemnly in the doorway.

Hyuga set the papers down and turned to face him. “You’re leaving Solaris.”

Sig nodded. His mouth was set in a firm line, his hand on the hilt of the gun he wore at his belt. “They stole me from the surface. They brainwashed me. They took me from my family. All I want is to go back.”

“I know,” Hyuga said, gently.

“Then you’ll let me go.” Sig’s eyes, those big blue jaspers, met Hyuga’s, pleading with him. “I have to leave tonight, Hyuga. It’s my only chance.”

Your loyalty to Solaris must be absolute, Cain had said to Hyuga, when he named him as a Guardian Angel. He hadn’t said, “or else,” but Hyuga knew the consequences of betrayal.

Solaris had taken everything from him, with the bio-engineered plague that killed his entire family. And Solaris had given him everything: status, money, and a family of friends to replace what was lost.

In his heart, Hyuga was a coward. He knew this, he understood it. He walked the fine line, he dwelt within the shades of gray. He’d pledged his loyalty to a country who had stolen a young boy from his family and brainwashed him until he’d become an unrivaled soldier, a country that would have made of Hyuga Ricdeau a worker bee, little better than a slave, if not for his talent and intellect.

He’d pledged his loyalty to the only home he’d ever known. And what was known—this city, this culture, this authority—had to be better than the unknown that Sig seemed so eager to leap into.

“I don’t want to fight you,” Sigurd said, his fingers curled around the grip of his gun.

Hyuga was a coward. But that night, he was not afraid.

"Do you know who you are?” he asked Sigurd.

“I don’t remember,” Sigurd whispered, with something like despair. “But I’m going to find my family. I’m going to find out who I am.”

“Your name is Sigurd Harcourt,” Hyuga said. He’d known for some time, having hacked into the Ministry’s secret infobanks as a diversion during his senior year at Jugend. He never thought it would do any good to tell Sigurd, but now, this would be his parting gift to the man who had become like a brother to him for so many years. “Your father was King Edbart Fatima, and your mother was Shalimar Harcourt. You have a half-brother named Bartholomew.”

Sigurd just stared, his eyes wide and wet, his mouth half open. Hyuga handed him the pass to enter the docks.

“Go,” Hyuga said. “I’m not going to stop you.”

“I—I might not see you again,” Sigurd said. “Thank you…for this, for everything.”

Hyuga embraced him, briefly, then watched him go. Loyalty to king and country was flexible enough, but Sigurd had been his friend, and in this moment, that meant everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All done! Thanks for reading <3


End file.
